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December 19, 2014

Form of the Week 19 – The Elegy

On Thursday, October 11th, 2012, I got back into the classroom for the first time in a long while. The week before I had dropped in on Dr. Bennet Shaber, Chair of the SUNY College at Oswego Department of English and Creative Writing, to drop off a couple of books for the Department’s display of faculty publications: Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets and my Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, both published in the same year. I was mildly surprised to see that Bennet seemed to be more interested in the former volume than in the book of literary criticism.

“I’m teaching the elegy this semester,” he told me. “It’s a seminar. How about coming to class next week and talking to my students?” he asked. “They’re smart and interested. These aren’t exactly ‘elegies,’ he observed, ‘but close.’”

I happily agreed, so I went home and prepared some materials. I asked Bennet to send me a list of the major elegies he had covered so far this year, and he sent me this list by email:

“Spencer's Astrophel, Nashe's A Litany in Time of Plague, Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Shelley's Adonais are the major poems so far. We've also read some more modern/contemporary poems by Dennis O'Driscoll, Richard Garcia, Tess Gallagher, and Sharon Olds. Next Tuesday they have a paper due, so I'll spend the class showing them some paintings that touch on pastoral elegy (Poussin's two Arcadian Shepherd paintings principally). Then Thursday is YOU! I've been using Sandra Gilbert's Inventions of Farewell to supply most of the modern poetry. I can have them bring it to class if you know the volume and want to read some of those as well as your own poetry.”

I wrote back, “Attached you will find the titles and pages that I will read your class.” This is the attachment:

ELEGIES

From The Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics, Fourth Edition:

Occasional Poetry, pp. 266-269;

Elegiac Distich, Elegy, and “Elegy for John,: pp. 201-203

From Fearful Pleasures, The Collected Poems of Lewis Turco:

“In a White Direction,” p. 41

“Lines for Mr. Stevenson,” p. 48

“Trilogy for J. F. K.,” pp. 51-54

“The Pilot,” pp. 179-180

“Cancer,” pp. 401-402

“The Recurring Dream,” pp. 403-404

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court:

“Elegy Composed in a Watermelon Patch,” pp. 181-183

From The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition:

Sestina, pp. 334-344

“The Obsession,” pp. 341-342

Interestingly, at least to me, is the coincidence that another book just out, Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776, edited by Dennis Barone, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012, contains, among an unusual but thoughtful selection of four of my poems, two elegies, “The Recurring Dream,” and the third part of “Trilogy for J. F. K.,” listed above, a Pindaric ode on the first anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, titled, “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day 1964”:

ODE ON ST. CECILIA’S DAY 1964

by Lewis Turco

1. Of the Past

Some music, then, for this day. Let it be

Suitable to the mood of fallen snow,

The veil of a virgin saint. Quietly

Let it come now, out of the silence; now

While the birds inexplicably forsake

The elm, the oak, the seed in the lilac....

Instead, drumrolls muffled in an old year,

An echo of trumpets in the streets. Clear

But muted, there is a ragged tattoo

Of hooves, image of a sable horse, wild-

Eyed, resisting the rein, skittish among

The twin rows of witness citizens who,

Their voices frozen, give up to the cold

Air of the marble city an old song.

2. Of the Present

But it’s another year, Cecilia’s day

Again, another part of the land. So,

Let the phantoms of those dead days lie

Under these new burdens of snow. Allow

That chorus of stricken men to dim like

Shadows into blackening film, the dark

Merging with the riderless horse. Feature

By feature, let the scene fade into near

Distance, into perspective, then shadow.

This is music for St. Cecilia. Yield

To her the lyric due her. Let us sing

For her patronage — her martyrdom grew

Out of a summer heart: she is our shield

Against the winter. She is always young.

3. Of the Moment

Here beyond the window the campus lies.

The students pass in mufflers and coats, eyes

Almost hidden against the wind. The sound

Of radio music settles around

The furniture, into the carpeting.

Choral voices: a requiem. Distant

And urgent, the November church bells ring.

Outdoors a dog rags something. An instant

Pause in his play — he has caught a squirrel

Which tosses and tosses in the gray air.

The mongrel, in the midst of his quarrel

With life, is assaulted by three girls. There,

At the base of a tree, the limp ruff falls

From insensate jaws, starts to inch up walls

Of oak bark toward some invisible

Sanctuary. The dog begins to howl.

The girls watch the squirrel into the limbs.

Cecilia’s radio is done with hymns.

Here is an elegy written in the form of a ballade; listen to the author read it:

Comments

Form of the Week 19 – The Elegy

On Thursday, October 11th, 2012, I got back into the classroom for the first time in a long while. The week before I had dropped in on Dr. Bennet Shaber, Chair of the SUNY College at Oswego Department of English and Creative Writing, to drop off a couple of books for the Department’s display of faculty publications: Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets and my Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, both published in the same year. I was mildly surprised to see that Bennet seemed to be more interested in the former volume than in the book of literary criticism.

“I’m teaching the elegy this semester,” he told me. “It’s a seminar. How about coming to class next week and talking to my students?” he asked. “They’re smart and interested. These aren’t exactly ‘elegies,’ he observed, ‘but close.’”

I happily agreed, so I went home and prepared some materials. I asked Bennet to send me a list of the major elegies he had covered so far this year, and he sent me this list by email:

“Spencer's Astrophel, Nashe's A Litany in Time of Plague, Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Shelley's Adonais are the major poems so far. We've also read some more modern/contemporary poems by Dennis O'Driscoll, Richard Garcia, Tess Gallagher, and Sharon Olds. Next Tuesday they have a paper due, so I'll spend the class showing them some paintings that touch on pastoral elegy (Poussin's two Arcadian Shepherd paintings principally). Then Thursday is YOU! I've been using Sandra Gilbert's Inventions of Farewell to supply most of the modern poetry. I can have them bring it to class if you know the volume and want to read some of those as well as your own poetry.”

I wrote back, “Attached you will find the titles and pages that I will read your class.” This is the attachment:

ELEGIES

From The Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics, Fourth Edition:

Occasional Poetry, pp. 266-269;

Elegiac Distich, Elegy, and “Elegy for John,: pp. 201-203

From Fearful Pleasures, The Collected Poems of Lewis Turco:

“In a White Direction,” p. 41

“Lines for Mr. Stevenson,” p. 48

“Trilogy for J. F. K.,” pp. 51-54

“The Pilot,” pp. 179-180

“Cancer,” pp. 401-402

“The Recurring Dream,” pp. 403-404

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court:

“Elegy Composed in a Watermelon Patch,” pp. 181-183

From The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition:

Sestina, pp. 334-344

“The Obsession,” pp. 341-342

Interestingly, at least to me, is the coincidence that another book just out, Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776, edited by Dennis Barone, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012, contains, among an unusual but thoughtful selection of four of my poems, two elegies, “The Recurring Dream,” and the third part of “Trilogy for J. F. K.,” listed above, a Pindaric ode on the first anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, titled, “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day 1964”:

ODE ON ST. CECILIA’S DAY 1964

by Lewis Turco

1. Of the Past

Some music, then, for this day. Let it be

Suitable to the mood of fallen snow,

The veil of a virgin saint. Quietly

Let it come now, out of the silence; now

While the birds inexplicably forsake

The elm, the oak, the seed in the lilac....

Instead, drumrolls muffled in an old year,

An echo of trumpets in the streets. Clear

But muted, there is a ragged tattoo

Of hooves, image of a sable horse, wild-

Eyed, resisting the rein, skittish among

The twin rows of witness citizens who,

Their voices frozen, give up to the cold

Air of the marble city an old song.

2. Of the Present

But it’s another year, Cecilia’s day

Again, another part of the land. So,

Let the phantoms of those dead days lie

Under these new burdens of snow. Allow

That chorus of stricken men to dim like

Shadows into blackening film, the dark

Merging with the riderless horse. Feature

By feature, let the scene fade into near

Distance, into perspective, then shadow.

This is music for St. Cecilia. Yield

To her the lyric due her. Let us sing

For her patronage — her martyrdom grew

Out of a summer heart: she is our shield

Against the winter. She is always young.

3. Of the Moment

Here beyond the window the campus lies.

The students pass in mufflers and coats, eyes

Almost hidden against the wind. The sound

Of radio music settles around

The furniture, into the carpeting.

Choral voices: a requiem. Distant

And urgent, the November church bells ring.

Outdoors a dog rags something. An instant

Pause in his play — he has caught a squirrel

Which tosses and tosses in the gray air.

The mongrel, in the midst of his quarrel

With life, is assaulted by three girls. There,

At the base of a tree, the limp ruff falls

From insensate jaws, starts to inch up walls

Of oak bark toward some invisible

Sanctuary. The dog begins to howl.

The girls watch the squirrel into the limbs.

Cecilia’s radio is done with hymns.

Here is an elegy written in the form of a ballade; listen to the author read it:

The Virginia Quarterly Review"The Mutable Past," a memoir collected in FANTASEERS, A BOOK OF MEMORIES by Lewis Turco of growing up in the 1950s in Meriden, Connecticut, (Scotsdale AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2005).

The Tower JournalTwo short stories, "The Demon in the Tree" and "The Substitute Wife," in the spring 2009 issue of Tower Journal.

The Tower JournalMemoir, “Pookah, The Greatest Cat in the History of the World,” Spring-Summer 2010.

The Michigan Quarterly ReviewThis is the first terzanelle ever published, in "The Michigan Quarterly Review" in 1965. It has been gathered in THE COLLECTED LYRICS OF LEWIS TURCO/WESLI COURT, 1953-2004 (www.StarCloudPress.com).

The Gawain PoetAn essay on the putative medieval author of "Gawain and the Green Knight" in the summer 2010 issue of Per Contra.